1. Josef Newgarden committed highway robbery in Fort Worth. He was not in the conversation for the first 75% of this race. He was sixth or seventh, not even the best Penske driver. The race shifted when Newgarden came down pit road under the first caution for Zach Veach's accident. There was no way he could make it from there but it allowed Newgarden to go hard on his fourth stint while everyone else was stretching to get to lap 186 where the race could be completed on three stops. Everyone stopped but Newgarden could run hard for a handful of laps and it played out. Newgarden stopped and cycled ahead of everyone.
Tim Cindric deserves a lot of credit for this victory. Instead of trying to stretch and make it on three he found a way to run hard and make it on four but instead of that fourth stop coming late for a splash he used the caution to be a layup pit stop and made the third green flag stop just a little later than everyone else and allowing Newgarden to take less fuel and run harder.
It wasn't all pit strategy or fuel strategy. The cautions late put Newgarden in a spot where he had to hold off challenges from Scott Dixon and then Alexander Rossi and Newgarden kept his nose in front. Rossi made move after move on the outside on the quad-oval but could not nip Newgarden at the line and could not carry the momentum into turn one to complete the pass. The good news for Newgarden is it didn't have to come down to a drag race. In the final three laps, Rossi fell off; Newgarden had the breathing and won by 0.8164 seconds.
Newgarden extended the championship lead. He picked up his third victory of the season, the first driver to get three victories and just when it seemed like Rossi, Dixon and Simon Pagenaud were starting their assault on the championship lead, Newgarden has fended off the competition and he heads into the summer with momentum.
2. Nine times out of ten a second place finish would be nice for Alexander Rossi, who is second in the championship but the championship leader beats you there is no good nice. There is no moral victory in walking away with a chunk of points and for the third time in four races Rossi is finishing second to a Penske driver when he was sniffing a victory.
Of the three races, this was the least Rossi deserved. He was good all night, running in the top five and likely going to finish on the podium but a victory didn't seemed to be in the cards. However, what Rossi did have tonight was a better car than Newgarden and he should have taken some points out of that deficit. That is the biggest bummer in all this. If he had finished second to Dixon or Ryan Hunter-Reay but two or four spots ahead of Newgarden this night would feel a lot better.
Rossi is knocking on the door for that second victory and it has to come soon. Newgarden is letting up.
3. Graham Rahal ran in the top ten all night. At first, it appeared he would be leading the three-stoppers with a 63-lap first stint but he appeared to lose the stability on that strategy on the second stint, going only 55 laps. He ran well all night and when the race got tossed in the blender, chewing up the likes of Dixon, Colton Herta and James Hinchcliffe, it put Rahal in a spot to get more and he took advantage of it.
4. Santino Ferrucci finished fourth and he is the top rookie in the championship. Ferrucci completes laps and he benefitted from the attrition and misfortune of others but he was going to finish eighth or ninth otherwise. While all the other rookies have had missteps, Ferrucci keeps completing laps and amazingly he has completed the most laps this season as the two laps he did not complete at Long Beach being the lone blemish.
He has been good this year and he finished ahead of his teammate Sébastien Bourdais, who was eighth. It is the first time Bourdais has finished in the top ten but behind a teammate since Surfers Paradise in 2006 when Bourdais finished eighth but Bruno Junqueira finished sixth. Ferrucci is ninth in the championship and Bourdais is tenth. Bravo to the Nutmegger.
5. Ryan Hunter-Reay has to be upset because this is one that got away. He led a lot of this race and he was not planning for a three-stop strategy. I have a feeling Hunter-Reay was planned for a four-stop strategy because the tires were going to fall off and nobody would be able to do 62 laps on a stint. Unfortunately for him, the tires never fell off like we have seen in recent years at Texas and Hunter-Reay was a sitting duck.
Hunter-Reay was in trouble and the cautions helped but after seeing Newgarden getting the third stop out of the way under that first caution hindsight points to Hunter-Reay sacrificing the track position earlier than trying to make it on three stops but ultimately always going to fall short. This night could have been worse. Hunter-Reay could have been forced to make a green flag stop late and finish 13th. He was better than fifth but tonight fifth should be sufficient.
Side note: American drivers took the top five positions. I will look up later the last time American drivers swept the top five positions in an IndyCar race but a decade ago IndyCar was down to Hunter-Reay, Rahal, Danica Patrick, Marco Andretti and Ed Carpenter as full-time American drivers. An American driver didn't win a race in 2009.
Here we are ten years later with not only Americans sweeping the top five at Texas but Newgarden has won three races, Rossi has won, Colton Herta won a race a week before turning 19 years old and that means American drivers have won five of the first nine races. The top two drivers in the championship are American, Americans have five of the top ten in the championship and 12 of the 22 starters were American drivers. What a difference a decade makes.
6. Simon Pagenaud finished sixth and that is kind of where he was all night. He was the top Penske for most of this one until Newgarden's roll of the dice. This kind of feels like Pagenaud reverting to where he was before month of May: Constantly in fifth, sixth or seventh but not really challenging for victories. Everyone was excited for Pagenaud after Indianapolis but this is the form he has to break. He needs to do better than sixth.
7. Marcus Ericsson gets a seventh place finish and he was clean all night. He is getting the results and he hasn't been bad this year. He has things go against him, some of his own doing, see Austin. Ericsson did well at Indianapolis and again he let that one get away from him when he spun entering the pit lane but he has redeemed himself in the last two weekends.
8. We touched upon Sébastien Bourdais but he was good, not great tonight. He dropped back a bit but remained in the top ten all night but wasn't really much better than eighth. He was ahead of Ferrucci for much of tonight but when the cautions bunched up the field he was overtaken. Dale Coyne Racing is going to be interesting to watch in the second half of the season.
9. Will Power was awful tonight and he finished ninth. He dropped like a rock at the start. He was a lap down pretty much from the first pit stop to the finish and he finished ninth. He benefitted from attrition but this night could have been much worse.
10. Marco Andretti was in a similar boat as Power and the two drivers pretty much ran in lock and step from the start. Like Power, Andretti carried it to a top ten finish.
11. Conor Daly deserves praise because he was ahead of Power and Andretti for a good portion of this race and it looked like he was going to be the top lapped car. Charlie Kimball was doing well before a right rear bearing went. I think Carlin should hire these two for the remaining oval races and use them to find direction for the program. Both were doing well tonight. Both did well at Indianapolis. I think Carlin has its drivers for Iowa, Pocono and Gateway. We know Kimball will be at Pocono but now it is up to the team to pull the trigger and lock up Daly for those three races and Kimball for the short ovals.
12. Quickly through the field: Felix Rosenqvist did not have a great night and finished 12th. Ed Carpenter Racing was worse than Rosenqvist tonight. Both cars dropped at the start and Ed Carpenter bested Spencer Pigot 13th to 14th but this was not the night either were likely expecting.
13. Takuma Sato dominated the first stint but slid into his pit stall, clipped his left front tire changer and the night was pretty much over from there. I am of the mindset that if a driver hits a crew member or leaves with a tire loose it should be an automatic disqualification. For starters, Sato's night was over, let's just park him but we also need to protect crew members.
Was Sato's mistake egregious? Yes. Was it careless? I don't think Sato was out of line. He was aggressive and sometimes you make a mistake and when that happens on pit lane, others can be hurt. There needs to be a big disincentive to hitting a crew member and parking a car for such a fraction is not out of line.
It is murky water because Power nudged a crew member on his pit stop at the Indianapolis 500. It was the equivalent of you accidentally stepping back and stepping on the foot of a person behind you. Sato bowled over a crew. Should Power have been disqualified? Probably not. It is hard for it to be black-and-white but after the few incidents at the Indianapolis 500 we need to make sure crew members are protected and one way to do that is to make sure there is a stricter penalty.
14. Scott Dixon could have won this race. Colton Herta could have finished on the podium. Both cars came together in turn three. Herta threw it up the inside. Dixon was squeezing a bit. It seems like Dixon acknowledged some fault to Herta in the care center. I feel like it was a racing incident and it is brutal that it took both drivers out. Just when it appeared Dixon was hitting his stride he suffers a set back and just when it appeared Herta was going to get his first top ten finish since the last time IndyCar was in Texas in June, neither finished the race.
I am not concerned about Dixon. He will win another race or two. Herta has five retirements in six races. Two of those were mechanical, one of those he was hit from behind and he hit the wall on his own at Long Beach. Tonight might not have been 100% on his shoulders but after the stretch he was on and the team's financial difficulties he should have thought big picture and gotten a top five.
Herta is 19 years old. I get that he wants to succeed and live up to the hype but he can do that with a fourth place finish and finishing behind Dixon. When he keeps retiring from races at 19 years old he starts to turn people off. People are starting to get cynical about the kid. Austin is becoming a flash in the pan. I get he wants to win but somebody needs to sit him down and make him realize at 19 years old he has to take the top five finish. He is still learning where the limit is and he learned the hard way tonight that his attempted move would not work. For the second half of the season Herta has to learn from the burns that have left scars.
15. James Hinchcliffe and Zach Veach both coughed up top ten finishes today after brushing the wall exiting turn two. Neither needed that and both are having disappointing seasons. Speaking of disappointing seasons, we glossed over Tony Kanaan, who finished 16th and his A.J. Foyt Racing teammate Matheus Leist was pretty much parked after 73 laps. A.J. Foyt was saying the team was no longer going to take the poor results. I am getting a feeling that Leist could be on the verge of being fired. If Foyt is openly talking about shake-ups then a driver change if not multiple driver changes cannot be ruled out.
16. Let's talk about the tires because the lack of degradation turned the race into a fuel mileage race, nothing wrong with that but I don't think anyone planned for it and in some ways Firestone needed a tire that wore out noticeably. I think Texas hit its stride when the tires were gone after 35 laps and drivers really had to work to make it last to at least lap 50.
There is part of me that is thinking Eddie Gossage is going to extend this race to 650 kilometers to prevent it being a fuel mileage race next year but that can't be the answer. One, I am not sure the teams want to take on the additional cost of 50 kilometers and two, we know there is a more affordable option and that is Firestone bringing a tire that dropped off 15-20 laps before the end of a fuel window.
Firestone did a great job at Belle Isle with the alternative tire. Texas can't have the drastic fall off that we saw after 12 laps on a stint at Belle Isle but it needed more tonight and I will acknowledge that weather and conditions play a role into it and Firestone can only do so much in terms of the temperature. If it was five degrees warmer then maybe the tires are junk 40 laps into a stint and I am singing a different story about Firestone. Firestone does a great job and the conditions are out of its control.
17. Eddie Gossage ruined Texas Motor Speedway with the reconfiguration of turn one and turn two. The bottom lane is too advantageous. The top line can carry no momentum to make a pass and the difference in length between the line on the white line and the top groove is infuriating. The only way to make a pass on the outside in turn one and turn two is if another driver has a bobble but outside of that you are fucked.
It is too late to fix it now but honestly that was a waste of money and for what? A photo-op and bullshit press releases about looking out for the fans with a track modification. Spare me.
18. Alright. Time for bed. Time for some off time for IndyCar. Road America is a fortnight away but before that is Le Mans.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
